The other problem I anticipate some people might have with my conception of religious freedom is that there is no way to ensure virtue and the enactment of virtuous laws. For a ridiculous example, let’s say that there is a religious group that advocates human sacrifice. Would they be protected under the same freedom of religion and freedom of practice provisions that I seem to be advocating for?

It is safe to say that in this particular case, the belief would not be restricted, but practice would be.

Am I way off base?

Let me explain.

Just because I do not believe that there should be a state-mandated religion does not mean that I do not believe people who have religious convictions should be involved in the government and legislate according to their convictions.

In fact, why would we expect anything different than people with convictions serving in government positions? After all, everyone has a worldview, and whether or not they want to admit it or not, there is a faith-based component to all worldviews.

Therefore, it would be odd to say that nobody with religious beliefs could serve in a government position because every position would remain empty.

With that thought in mind, we return to this idea of the possible permissibility of human sacrifice within this hypothetical government system that embraces religious freedom and practice.

People who are serving in the government will promote laws that are consistent with their own worldview. The American founding fathers did that, and politicians still do that to this day. They vote for laws that they can support.

Now, refer to my previous post. In places where religious freedom has been government policy, Christianity has been by and large the way that society has moved. This is not the state-mandated religion but rather people being empowered to make their own choice and following the evidence where it leads.

That is a vital difference here between the state-mandated religion and freedom of religion.

In this situation, you are still going to have a government that embraces Christian values, but they are going to do it because people have come to the conclusion that they choose to be Christians based on evidence. As Christians, they would vote for laws consistent with their convictions that human sacrifice is an evil practice.

However, this is the will of the people speaking; this is not governmental intrusion into people’s lives. This is the elected officials of the people making the decisions that they were chosen to make.

Do I believe that laws would resemble Christian morality? Yes I do because as I have written before, I think that Christianity is where a genuine search for truth is going to lead to. This is not the government deciding to act from the top down, but it is because that is what the people, having freely chosen their individual worldviews and representatives as a consequence of that, have decided to do. It is built on the genuine consent of the people.

I hope I have made this distinction clear and have addressed probably the two biggest criticisms that I think will come against this view of the role of government and religion.

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